An Appointed Time

“When I select AN APPOINTED TIME, it is I who judge with equity” (Psalm 75:2 NAS).

Time is a concept only real in the boundaries of the material creation.  It is the fourth dimension context of the three dimensional reality that we are temporarily placed into.  Consequently, we are often tempted to be impatient and to accuse the Lord of indifference and/or injustice, or even both.  From our limited perspective, it often appears that justice is never served.  But God declares that there is “an appointed time” when He will “judge with equity.”  And because there is an appointed time for equitable justice, we can logically infer that there are many un-appointed times when justice is not equitable.

 

Solomon, speaking with extraordinary wisdom, said that “there is an appointed time for everything,” and “a time for every event under heaven;” and that God “made everything appropriate in its time” (Ecclesiastes 3:1 and 11).  And that’s the key; everything has a time, an appointed time, to become appropriate.  And because a thousand years is like a day to God, we are left to see but little if any connection between the cause and effect of many equitable judgments.  When Solomon declared that all men—both the righteous and the wicked—will be judged by God (see Ecclesiastes 3:17), he first declared that “in the place of justice there is wickedness, and in the place of righteousness there is wickedness” (Ecclesiastes 3:16).

From scientific observation alone justice is not served, but inherent in all human observation is an extraordinary limitation of the full spectrum of all the reality there is to see and understand.  Thus, we can only embrace the idea of equitable justice by faith!  And faith, being “the conviction of things not seen,” and also being spiritual in nature, is a force that transcends time.  But while we operate here in the natural world, we must comfort ourselves with transcendent realities.  Yes, often our faith secures the supernatural and causes a manifestation here in the natural world, but until everything is thus realized, we must wait for our Lord from heaven.  He is the Judge, the appointed time comes when He comes!

     

Until then, time is the container of our dimension and the context of our natural life.  Until the appointed time, the time when time ceases to exist, we—like those martyrs who cry out for justice from beneath His throne—are required to patiently wait for our justice.  Indeed, “A time for every matter and every deed is there” (Ecclesiastes 3:17).

Ultimately, it behooves us to always remember that we have the mind of Christ, and as such, we are both inside and outside of time, living both a mortal life-span and an immortal eternal life simultaneously.  Time is God’s creation, a marvelous thing indeed, but time is transitory and fading.  The idea of getting our minds on things above and not on the things of the earth is practical in nature because—although we are both born from above and a vapor here below—the vapor will dissipate, but that which is born from above will overcome the world (and consequently transcend the time constraint).

 

Our Lord has already prepared a place for us.  Indeed, “I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him.  That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by” (Ecclesiastes 3:14-15).  From God’s perspective (the only perspective that really matters) time is already past; it’s now simply about us catching up to that reality.